Plebbit is a peer-to-peer Reddit alternative that allows you to self host and own your own community

Submitted ⁨⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago⁩ by ⁨Plebbitor@lemmy.world⁩ to ⁨selfhosted@lemmy.world⁩

https://lemmy.world/pictrs/image/259b9ee4-ed0e-43d1-9b4d-1577fbdcdcc0.jpeg

Plebbit is a selfhosted, opensource, nonprofit social media protocol, this project was created due to wanting to give control of communication and data back to the people.

Plebbit only hosts text. Images from google and other sites can be linked/embedded in posts. This fixes the issue of hosting any nefarious content.

it has no central server, database, HTTP endpoint or DNS - it is pure peer to peer. Unlike federated instances, which are regular websites that can get deplatformed at any time,

ENS domain are used to name communities.

Plebbit currently offers different UIs. Old reddit and new reddit, 4chan, and have a Blog. Plebbit intend to have an app, internet archive, wiki and twitter and Lemmy. Choice is important. The backend/communities are shared across clients.

The code is fully open source on

github.com/plebbit

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Comments

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Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
According to OP’s previous comments the dev of this has spent 600k of their own money on this. If that claim is legitimate then feel free to draw your own conclusions about why someone with 600k to burn would spend it on an NFT crypto reddit, but without images.

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- watson387@sopuli.xyz ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Yeah, I lost interest at ‘blockchain’.
  
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- sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Did they pay devs to build it for them?
  
  I’m working on a similar project, but I’m 100% bootstrapping it. I’m using Iroh (similar to IPFS, but hopefully faster), and there will just be the one UI until someone makes another. I haven’t done authentication yet, but I might end up using blockchain for that, idk, I need some form of trusted directory.
  
  I’m going to be looking through this, because it sounds very similar to what I’m working on, and I’d love to just join a project instead of doing all the leg work of getting traction myself. The things I’m particularly interested in are:
  
  moderation - I plan to use something like a web of trust, but with transitive trust; you select people you trust, and whether you see something depends on how those users moderated
  
  persistence when users go offline - I use a local first approach, so a post is cached locally if you either authored or viewed it, and peers will pull from you if you’re the closest source; caches would need to expire so we don’t blow up everyone’s storage
  
  communities operate in a single namespace (so fix the main complexity w/ federation) - you create a community by posting to that namespace, and it gets mixed w/ other users who post to that same namespace
  
  I’m also interested in building an ActivityPub bridge, so this network can act like an “instance” of sorts and push/pull content from the rest of the Fediverse. This is mostly to seed content in the early days, and I’ll decide whether it’s worth it once everything else works.
  
  I don’t know if Plebbit does any or all of this, hence the interest. That said, someone spending actual money on it seems a bit… odd, since I don’t see how this could be monetized.
  
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  - Plebbitor@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    They pay the devs via bounties and meeting milestones.
    
    We tried iroh but it wasn’t fit for purpose. We have tackled the moderation exactly how you’ve described it. Allowing multiple people to control a community. We’re in the process of implementing it. Our version of this allows people to create multicommunities where it shows similar communities in one sub.
    
    Activity pub would be interesting but plebbit is so technologically different were not sure it would be technically possible. We forgo the concept of instances entirely allowing Plebbit to work closer to Reddit, where you just search a sub. Global admins don’t exist on Plebbit. Subs can still share ban lists if they wish but its optional
    
    Plebbit is always looking for new devs, join our telegram group @joinplebbit to discuss with the main dev about joining the project.
    
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  - sem@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    What would be the possible alternatives to block chain?
    
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- jagged_circle@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  They’re probably calculation their own labor, which they mark as a negative.
  
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FundMECFSResearch@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Looks interesting. But I don’t see what the point is unless you connect to fediverse or can attract a critical mass to keep it self sustaining.

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- GreenKnight23@lemmy.world ⁨15⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
  yeah…the fediverse is Reddit 2.0
  
  Lemmy has been getting a little more…fascisty lately. each community has basically been infiltrated by power-tripping mods from Reddit that honestly have no business being mods.
  
  it’s good to have things different than Reddit and Lemmy.
  
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  - Corgana@startrek.website ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    “Lemmy” is actually not a platform like Reddit, it’s software and the network is decentralized (it uses the ActivityPub protocol) meaning each instance is operated by a different person (or group). There are also other similar softwares like Piefed and mBin that work pretty well with Lemmy. That is all to say that if an Admin or Mod is “getting fascisty” you can block that instance, join another, or even create your own. That’s the beauty of ActivityPub!
    
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  - Blaze@sopuli.xyz ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    
    each community has basically been infiltrated by power-tripping mods from Reddit that honestly have no business being mods.
    
    Do you have examples? I follow !yepowertrippinbastards@lemmy.dbzer0.com quite closely, and except the usual Lemmy.ml and Lemmy.world power tripping the vast majority of communities seem okay
    
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- sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  I don’t get why people are so interested in the fediverse. I guess it’s a sizeable amount of content, but it’s not really all that popular and has a host of its own issues.
  
  That said, I’m working on a similar project (distributed Reddit clone), and one of my goals is to eventually connect it to the fediverse to get access to content. That said, a distributed service isn’t directly compatible w/ a federated one (there are no servers in a distributed service, only simple relays), so I’d have to build a bridge to get it to work, and bridges are notoriously awkward to deal with in the best case (see Matrix bridges), and adding P2P on top of that makes things even more awkward.
  
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  - Corgana@startrek.website ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    
    I don’t get why people are so interested in the fediverse.
    
    Because Mastodon is Twitter without the possibility of an Elon Musk and Lemmy/Piefed is Reddit without the possibility of a Steve Huffman. You clearly feel that you can do better than the collective efforts of the ActivityPub devs so I am rooting for you!
    
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Boomkop3@reddthat.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
Hold up plebs (hah), this alternative to dns (domain name system) called ens is actually more centralized.

Whomever came up with the idea to charge people gas fees is a billionaire now. Ignoring that bit, this blockchain based domain system looks cool, but an unmoderatable free-for-all is an absolutely terrible idea

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- sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  
  unmoderatable free-for-all
  
  I read through the whitepaper, and it has moderators similar to Reddit/Lemmy. Basically, whoever creates the community (subplebbit) is the owner/admin (they like to say “adminless,” but each community has an admin), and they can select moderators, who can do moderation tasks like deleting posts.
  
  So it should have the same benefits and problems as Reddit since it’ll all come down to the moderation team the admin selects.
  
  If you think of it like Lemmy, but instead of instance admins you have community admins, you’ll be more right than wrong.
  
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  - kchr@lemmy.sdf.org ⁨13⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    
    In fact, trust isn’t manually handled, it’s handled based on how similarly you act vs others (i.e. you both upvote/downvote similarly, flag posts similarly, etc), and I’m deciding whether making this based on community makes sense (i.e. you trust user A on community X, but not on community Y).
    
    Wouldn’t this just create an impenetrable filter bubble/echo chamber where you see nothing else than content you 100% agree with?
    
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  - Boomkop3@reddthat.com ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    You misread, the unmoderatable free-for-all is about the domain name system alternative
    
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Godnroc@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
… Ain’t that just a website?

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- kolorafa@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  It sounds like jest plain simple website/forum BUT with specific protocol making it more discoverable/searchable?
  
  Allowing to post comments anonymously… sound like a bad idea in theong run, but who know, make me eat my words.
  
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  - sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    
    Allowing to post comments anonymously… sound like a bad idea in the long run, but who know, make me eat my words.
    
    How so? Reddit and Lemmy do just that. There’s nothing tying my username to me, and I’m guessing there’s nothing typing yours to you.
    
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i_am_not_a_robot@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago

This fixes the issue of hosting any nefarious content.

How does removing images change anything? Any file can be transmitted by text, as we used to do with e-mail, and you don’t need to use images to make illegal or just intentionally offensive content.

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- rimu@piefed.social ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Something tells me the "I don't host CSAM I just host posts that embed CSAM (from other hosts)" argument won't hold up in court.
  
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  - Jakeroxs@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Doesn’t it tho? That was part of the issue with Lemmy federating suspected csam content as the actual content ended up on their servers.
    
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  - Blaze@sopuli.xyz ⁨14⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
    Happy cake day!
    
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mostlikelyaperson@lemmy.world ⁨12⁩ ⁨hours⁩ ago
Yet more cryptotrash.

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SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
No matter what choice you make, Lemmy or Plebbit or something else, it’s clear that decentralized/federated services are the real future. The return of the torrent swarms but forum swarms instead.

At some point something clicked with everyone, and they realized “the cloud” is someone else’s computer, someone else’s property. We all collectively realized you never feel truly free when you’re on someone else’s property, you’re always playing by their rules. At least with decentralization the levels of control are distributed so you have less of one person wresting control from anyone else.

It’s a bit like growing your own garden. You do it because you know what you’re putting into your garden and getting out of it. If you choose to use pesticides, that’s your choice, and no one else’s. When you choose how to run your own self-hosted services, it becomes your choice what comes and goes from your network.

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- jaybone@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  Unfortunately for the fediverse, most regular users want to use their twitters and facebooks and instagrams and whatnot. I don’t see regular users switching over. And if they did, you know the big guys would come up with something to compete.
  
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  - sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Unfortunately, that seems to be how things go.
    
    That said, I am working on my own Reddit alternative, which at least keeps me out of trouble. If it ever goes big, it’ll get squashed by the big tech companies, but at least I’ll have the satisfaction of building something cool.
    
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  - Strawberry@sh.itjust.works ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Embrase, Extend, Extinguush maybe :(
    
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- jagged_circle@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Sometimes the cloud is your own computer
  
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jagged_circle@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
Incoming ASCII CSAM

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- fnrir@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  *AI generated ASCII CSAM
  
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Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
So in what way is that better than Lemmy?

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- Boomkop3@reddthat.com ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  I think it’s the same in most aspects, just less developed. However, it looks like the devs lie about the benefits and use a less secure alternative to dns.
  
  It’s garbage with a funny name
  
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- myrrh@ttrpg.network ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  …i remember going to our computer lab in the early nineties and seeing a flyer about this new protocol called the world wide web, thinking to myself in what way is that better than gopher?..
  
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  - Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    Greetings, fellow geezer! And yes, I’ve been there too. My first foray on the web was with Lynx, a text based browser. Left me pretty underwhelmed. But once I actually tried Mosaic, I was instantly converted.
    
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- sugar_in_your_tea@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  From reading the whitepaper, you basically replace instance admins with community admins, and your P2P peers will cache some of the content so you don’t hit the community admin all the time. Benefits:
  
  lower hosting costs - you only need to pay for storage for your community, plus some transfer as comments/posts get updated on your "instance"
  
  risk is limited to whatever communities someone is hosting, not an entire instance
  
  user accounts aren’t centralized, so if a community goes down, you still have your user account
  
  some protection against doxxing IP addresses, whereas w/ Lemmy you need to trust your instance admins
  
  Other differences:
  
  moderation is selected by the community admin, there are no instance admins
  
  trust mechanisms (captcha and whatnot) is managed at the community level, since there is no instance level
  
  Potential downsides:
  
  no ActivityPub, so it won’t interact w/ the fediverse whatsoever
  
  affiliated w/ their own crypto token, and has ties to Ethereum NFTs and whatnot
  
  lots of different interfaces (4chan clone, Reddit clone, etc), which could cause distraction for devs
  
  uses public-key addressing instead of content addressing, so it could be slow (they propose a mitigation)
  
  I think it’s a step in the right direction in some areas, but ultimately there’s just a bit too much association w/ cryptocurrencies for it to really be a long-lasting service. We’ll see though, maybe my fears are unwarranted.
  
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  - geneva_convenience@lemmy.ml ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    The ideas sound solid. One of Lemmy’s issue is different instances hosting the same community and frequently posting the same content. But too much centralization leads to lemmy.world admins controlling everything. Still there might be abuse such as people claiming every community name.
    
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  - jagged_circle@feddit.nl ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    Oof. No Activity Pub is a death sentence
    
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- JackbyDev@programming.dev ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
  Does it need to be better? Can people just share things they find interesting or that they made?
  
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infeeeee@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
From the whitepaper it seems like you cannot comment at all? Or each comment is a post also, so you need a server, you need to host it to be able to reply? I don’t see a mention how an upvote/downvote system could work.

How this is even similar to reddit? From what I could find it’s much like a topic based microblogging, and it’s a very one way communication. As it’s similar to IPFS and torrent, which are also very one way communication. Seems like an interesting idea, but I don’t see why it was compared to reddit.

Personal opinion, IPFS clones are reinvented about every year, and because they sound very good on paper, but noone could figure out a legit usecase - maybe except piracy - they fail after a while. Maybe if we would become an actual InterPlanetary species with colonies on Mars they could be useful, but until I don’t really see a point trying it again and again and again…

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- SnotFlickerman@lemmy.blahaj.zone ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
  I don’t think that it’s that you can’t comment at all, it’s almost rather that you can only comment.
  
  Plebbit only hosts text. Images from google and other sites can be linked/embedded in posts. This fixes the issue of hosting any nefarious content.
  
  You can link to other things and embed them in a text post using code, but there is no ability to upload anything, so the content really is all just text (since links are created using text commands).
  
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  - infeeeee@lemm.ee ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
    base64 image is just text…
    
    How do you stop someone posting base64 encoded CSAM. And as it is “censorship resistant” you can’t even remove it… It was even a problem here in Lemmy, assholes are around the internet to destroy anything.
    
    Also cryptobros:
    
    The captcha service can be replaced by other “anti-spam strategies”, such proof of balance of a certain cryptocurrency. For example, a subplebbit owner might require that posts be signed by users holding at least 1 ETH, or at least 1 token of his choice.
    
    The more I read about this it sounds more and more terrible.
    
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  - pory@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨day⁩ ago
    Reddit was like that for ages before they implemented i.redd.it and v.redd.it. it’s the whole reason Imgur even exists, Reddit wouldn’t let you “upload an image” and would only aggregate comments and upvotes for links to external content.
    
    That said, this Plebbit project raises more red flags than a Danish standing army.
    
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cm0002@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
I like the concept, and truly hope it takes off, but holy fuck is it slow to load content on any of the first 2 web clients off the main website, plebbones took forever just to load the interface so I left.

As of right now, if it’s taking 2-3 minutes just to load the content of the tiny user base, I don’t see how it’ll be “infinitely scalable”

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GoMati@lemmy.world ⁨2⁩ ⁨days⁩ ago
I really like that dev is ambitious here and have my fingers crossed 🤞🏼

The more self hosted alternatives we have the better, maybe someday I’ll need one 😁

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